Snowdrops and Crocuses
by Lavinia Swire
Summary: He asks her what she thinks of the roses, and she laughs and tells him that she likes to be unusual, so she prefers spring flowers; snowdrops and crocuses. Sir Anthony and Maud's story. Winner of a Highclere Award!


**I own nothing. **

**Just an idea I've had knocking around for a bit. I might continue this for Mary and Edith if people like it. **

**Reviews make me happy. **

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><p>Snowdrops and Crocuses<p>

_Maud_.

As he whispers her name to himself, he automatically moves across to the bureau where a small photograph stands freshly dusted (by him, as always – he doesn't allow the maids to touch this picture). The photo is of a small dark-haired woman with sparkling eyes sitting neatly in an armchair, smiling straight at him. He finds himself smiling back at her, his heart lifting. He had always loved her smile. Her throaty laugh, her sense of humour had been what first drew him to her. He stands, cradling the photograph in his hands, lost in reverie.

* * *

><p>Flowers. So many flowers, their scent sitting heavily on the warm air. It is a muggy August day during the season, and he is a young baronet in London with his family for his sister's presentation. He is sweltering in his stiff collar, wishing that he could leave this dull garden party and return to the shade and cool stone of his family's country house, when he hears a laugh. He turns.<p>

At first he is disappointed. The young woman deep in conversation with his sister is no beauty: small, dark and serious, making her lacy dress seem overly frivolous. He moves to turn back, and she catches his eye and smiles at him. And he is lost.

Oh, that smile. It lights up her whole face, making her eyes shine and happy dimples appear in her cheeks. He had thought that she was plain before, but her smile rearranges all her features, and suddenly she is beautiful.

He becomes aware that she is moving towards him, and is also aware that his mouth is dry and his heart is beating rather faster than it should be. They talk – not for long, and in all honesty he has no idea what they discuss. The garden mostly, and the flowers. He asks her what she thinks of the roses, and she laughs and tells him that she likes to be unusual, so she prefers spring flowers; snowdrops and crocuses. Suddenly her chaperone arrives squawking and, before he can even say goodbye, hustles her away. She glances back apologetically over her shoulder, and he vaguely realizes that he didn't think to ask her name.

* * *

><p>That evening, the humid heat of the day has turned to a fine mist of rain, dampening hair and shawls, and making the marble steps of the grand house where tonight's ball is being held as slick as a piece of silk. As he struggles up the stairs the person in front of him slips and almost falls. Instinctively he moves to catch them, and finds himself facing the young woman he first saw earlier.<p>

They dance together almost all that night. And the next night. And the next. Her name is Maud, and she is the daughter of an untitled – though very wealthy – landowner. They talk almost constantly, conversation going from their families to London to the latest farming technology to politics almost without a break (he is surprised how well-informed she is on the latter topics, and how much he enjoys talking to her compared to the other debutantes, who often have nothing more to discuss than dresses and balls). As the season continues he finds himself appreciating her company and her sense of humour more and more.

He proposes on the last night of the season. He is escorting her outside to her carriage, and, just as he is about to make the noble speech he has spent all evening running through in his head, she smiles so genuinely at him, no, right _into_ him, into his heart, and the words seem to evaporate. He just takes her hand – so small in his – and stutters a little and gets the words out as simply as he can. There will be hours and days and years to talk later, and right now he tries to convey his meaning through his eyes. She looks at him and squeezes his hand in return, and her smile says everything.

And then he kisses her, and any words he might have managed to retain in his head are well and truly melted.

* * *

><p>They are married by the end of the next spring. It is both their favourite time of year – his because he knows the land, and the idea that the plants are growing, moving under the soil brings a lightness to his step; hers because of the spring flowers that she loves so much, and because everything is so fresh and exciting. New beginnings. It is an appropriate time for a wedding. They stand together solemnly at the altar of the country church where all the Strallans have married. He glances down at her (she barely comes up to his shoulder), so serious, promising to love him until the end, and he feels a shiver up his spine. They are both so young. What if it doesn't work out? What if he can't be a good husband to her? What if –<p>

And then, on her vow 'to obey', she catches his eye from beneath her gauzy veil and quirks an eyebrow at him, and his worries disappear as he desperately fights not to burst out laughing in the middle of his wedding ceremony.

Waking the next morning with their arms still wrapped around each other and her hair streaming over both of them, he can't help but wonder if anyone has ever been as happy as he is right now.

* * *

><p>Their marriage isn't a fairy tale, of course. Her love of debate and argument leads to many disagreements on a whole variety of subjects. But they always make up. They love each other too much not to. And as the weeks and the months pass his fears of not making a good husband remain unfounded. They settle into routine, unconsciously forming the little rituals that take place every day.<p>

She is always different, his wife. Different to the other debutantes when he first met her, discussing current affairs rather than fashion and eligible young men; different at her wedding, scorning the demure roses selected by every other bride for snowdrops and crocuses, picked herself an hour before the ceremony (she doesn't normally like to pick them, but she can't resist just this once). Different with her low laugh and dry sense of humour. Furiously different to her female acquaintances as their waists thicken and they knit bootees and discuss nursery décor whilst she remains stubbornly slender and weeps privately in the empty room they had proudly reserved for a nursery when they had first moved in.

* * *

><p>And then, finally, after eight years, the morning comes when she finally blurts out the news that he's been longing to hear. He spills his coffee over himself in his excitement – to wait for so long and then to have their wish, the one thing that money couldn't buy, granted almost seems like a miracle.<p>

The weeks go by. She huffs and complains at the loss of her slim figure, but she doesn't fool him. He can see how thrilled she is, and how impatient to hold their child in her arms. She _glows_, as though the child inside her is a candle spreading light through her and shining from her eyes and her voice. He is ecstatic, though concerned for her, and he wraps her in cotton wool even more than normal, for which she scolds him gently. They are as excited as children waiting for Christmas.

And then everything is snatched away.

* * *

><p>An early morning in autumn, when the mist lies over the fields and breathes on the windows, trapping everything in its fingers. Desperate cries echo around the top floor of the house, and, when he comes running, she tries to shield herself, sobbing, fruitlessly trying to cover the blood on her skirts with her arms. The only evidence of the child that had spent five months growing inside her. As though whatever had granted their miracle had regretted its generosity and sought to take away its original gift as swiftly as possible.<p>

They both die a little inside that morning.

They deal with it in different ways. He throws himself into his work, allowing him to forget the ache inside for a while. She withdraws for a time.

She blames herself, he knows it. The doctor prescribes rest and calm, but there is really very little that can be done. Once enough time has passed, he avoids thinking about those weeks afterwards, when the woman that means everything to him sits listlessly for hours, a piece of embroidery or a novel forgotten in her hand, or cries herself to sleep late at night, trying not to let him hear. It's only once she is broken that he realizes how strong she was before. He knows of nothing he can do but hold her in his arms and stroke her hair and wait for her to come back to him.

She does come back. She is changed, naturally and there are shadows in her eyes that weren't there before, but she is back. She can smile again. And that is all he cares about. They have each other still, and that will be enough.

* * *

><p>They are closer now. First they had been in love deeply, passionately. Then that had changed for the routine, the normalcy of everyday life; they were still in love, but it went without saying now. There were difficulties, what with their longing for a child that, on bad days, threatened to place a rift between them forever. They never let that happen, though, for the good days outnumbered the bad and they were always sure that their child would come eventually and they were so in love.<p>

And then they looked death in the face, not in some dramatic scene on a moonlit road at midnight when the mist hung low, but on the third floor hallway with the flowered carpet, and after that nothing is the same. They cling together, mourning, for a while, but life has to go on.

Things change. She refuses to set foot on the third floor corridor, going up and down two back flights of stairs to avoid it, and he doesn't mention it because he knows the ghosts she sees there. He packs the furniture bought specially for the nursery away in an upstairs storeroom, more from a stubborn refusal to let go than from the fact that it might be needed, because the doctor had made it clear that any chance of another pregnancy was almost zero. As he nails up crates full of baby toys and mobiles, he comes across a box sent by his old friend the Earl of Grantham containing a beautiful christening mug, and he gets the unreasonable urge to smash it against the wall. Robert has three children now, all of them beautiful healthy girls, and here he is, he and his wife, in their grand lonely house with its echoing halls and sterile rooms. But then the urge passes and he feels ashamed. It's not Robert's fault, after all. It's not his fault either, or Maud's. It's bad luck, circumstances. Nothing anyone could do.

* * *

><p>The months and years tick by, and gradually they learn. They learn to think of other things for an hour, then half a day, then a whole day, without remembering. They learn that they don't need to feel guilty for laughing together like they did before. They learn to smile again. He had missed her smile. You can get used to most things sooner or later, and they do.<p>

He never realized just how much he appreciates his wife until he lost her for a while, and now he makes sure he shows his appreciation. Whenever he is away on business he writes to her every day, because he knows she misses him, even though she doesn't let on. He has the gardener bring flowers every morning and arranges them haphazardly in all the rooms, and soon the house is filled with red pink yellow blue purple. Once in early spring when she is away visiting a cousin he spends the day planting bulb after bulb on the grassy slope at the back of the house. He could have asked the gardener to do it but he wants to do it on his own. The blisters on his hands from the trowel and the ruined knees of his trousers and well worth he smiles of surprise and joy as one after another of her favourite flowers cover the bland green carpet with white and yellow and purple all through spring.

The bulbs bloom that year, and the next year, and the year after that. Time rolls on. The babies in perambulators being pushed by their nurses past their house (he can't help but feel a pang whenever he sees them) change to toddlers walking carefully and solemnly, holding onto each other with pudgy hands, then to children running and spinning hoops and laughing, while the nurses – looking much the same except a little older and more frazzled – bring up the rear. The two of them are growing older too, but they hardly notice. They have each other and are so happy together. They have years and years left, their happily ever after.

They are wrong.

* * *

><p>It happens very quickly. He is going to London on business. Normally she comes to the station to see him off and fuss over him (secretly he rather enjoys it) but today she is feeling tired and she's been coughing a bit. Nothing a lie-in won't cure, she tells him, so she stays in bed and he kisses her goodbye. Her smile is the last thing he sees.<p>

Two days later he receives a barely coherent telegram from his housekeeper that is enough to make him drop everything and get the next train home, praying he'll be in time. As he rushes through the door the doctor is coming down the stairs wearing the same expression he had worn on that early morning in winter years ago. He uses the same meaningless words of comfort as well, but he can't hear them. He's gone numb inside.

The funeral service is the usual depressing affair, and he can't help thinking that it's not what Maud would want. She loves – _loved, _he reminds himself painfully – loved to smile and to laugh; she would hate people standing around being gloomy because of her. Then he feels like a hypocrite, because he is sure that this world has ended, that he won't be able to carry on without her, and she would want that least of all.

He goes home and cries. Because it's so hard, because he doesn't know how to go on, which path to take. Because he's angry – with her for leaving him, with the doctor for not saving her, with everyone at the funeral with their stupid empty words and their roses and lilies.

He goes back to the churchyard the next day and plants bulbs all over her grave. Snowdrops and crocuses. The other flowers are beginning to wilt already, and he likes the idea of her sleeping underneath a blanket of her favourite flowers. Then he goes back home again and tries to get on with his life.

* * *

><p>He lowers the photo slowly. The clock ticking is suddenly very loud in the silent room.<p>

He still misses her. Of course he does. Even this morning he had been reading the newspaper and found himself thinking, 'I must show this to Maud'. A reflex, he supposes. There were so many patterns that he had become accustomed to, and his mind seems unwilling to relinquish them.

He still sees her. In the things she had loved; in her flowers, the snowdrops and crocuses she had grown. Not to pick and let wither, but to watch bud and blossom, to brighten the snow and slush for everyone to enjoy. He hears her voice, remarking on an article when he reads the paper, or making a pithy comment if he sees something that would have amused her. He sees her smile and hears her laugh.

Even the three years that have passed since her death haven't deadened his memories of her. He still half-expects to come home in the evening to find her knitting, or to look out over the garden and see her kneeling down planting bulbs or cleaning dead grass away from her beloved flowers. To let them breathe, she always said, and he always laughed at her sentimentality. Yet for some reason last spring he had noticed the weeds that the gardener hadn't got round to tidying up around the small bright flowers and been compelled to clear patches around them. They are his favourites as well now. Often overlooked, but in his mind the most beautiful.


End file.
